• Journal of Powder Materials
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.416-421
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• 2002

Elemental powders are used in high energy milling processes for the synthesis of new compounds. The low temperature solid state reactions during milling in inert gas atmosphere may result in intermetallic phases, carbides, nitrides or silicides with a nanocrystalline structure. To obtain dense materials from the powders a pressure assisted densification is necessary. On the other side the defect-rich microstructure can be used for activated sintering of elemental powder mixtures to obtain dense bodies by pressureless sintering. Results are discussed for nanocrystalline cermet systems and for the sintering of aluminides and silicides.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 1995.02a
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• pp.034-35
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• 1995

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2005.05a
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• pp.236-236
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• 2005

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2000.11a
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• pp.97-97
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• 2000

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 1997.05a
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• pp.64-65
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• 1997

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.389-393
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• 2004

The silicide layer used as a diffusion barrier in microelectronics is typically required to be below 50 nm-thick and, the same time, the silicides also need to have low contact resistance without agglomeration at high processing temperatures. We fabricated Si(100)/15 nm-Ni/15 nm-Co samples with a thermal evaporator, and annealed the samples for 40 seconds at temperatures ranging from $700^{\circ}C$ to $1100^{\circ}C$ using rapid thermal annealing. We investigated microstructural and compositional changes during annealing using transmission electron microscopy and auger electron spectroscopy. Sheet resistance of the annealed sample stack was measured with a four point probe. The sheet resistance measurements for our proposed Co/Ni composite silicide was below 8 $\Omega$/sq. even after annealing $1100^{\circ}C$, while conventional nickel-monosilicide showed abrupt phase transformation at $700^{\circ}C$. Microstructure and auger depth profiling showed that the silicides in our sample consisted of intermixed phases of $CoNiSi_{x}$ and NiSi. It was noticed that NiSi grew rapidly at the silicon interface with increasing annealing temperature without transforming into $NiSi_2$. Our results imply that Co/Ni composite silicide should have excellent high temperature stability even in post-silicidation processes.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.73-80
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• 2007

For the sub-65 nm CMOS process, it is necessary to develop a new silicide material and an accompanying process that allows the silicide to maintain a low sheet resistance and to have an enhanced thermal stability, thus providing for a wider process window. In this study, we have evaluated the property and unit process compatibility of newly proposed composite silicides. We fabricated composite silicide layers on single crystal silicon from $10nm-Ni_{1-x}Co_x/single-crystalline-Si(100),\;10nm-Ni_{1-x}Co_x/poly-crystalline-\;Si(100)$ wafers (x=0.2, 0.5, and 0.8) with the purpose of mimicking the silicides on source and drain actives and gates. Both the film structures were prepared by thermal evaporation and silicidized by rapid thermal annealing (RTA) from $700^{\circ}C\;to\;1100^{\circ}C$ for 40 seconds. The sheet resistance, cross-sectional microstructure, surface composition, were investigated using a four-point probe, a field emission scanning probe microscope, a field ion beam, an X-ray diffractometer, and an Auger electron depth profi1ing spectroscopy, respectively. Finally, our newly proposed composite silicides had a stable resistance up to $1100^{\circ}C$ and maintained it below $20{\Omega}/Sg$., while the conventional NiSi was limited to $700^{\circ}C$. All our results imply that the composite silicide made from NiCo alloy films may be a possible candidate for 65 nm-CMOS devices.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.179-185
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• 2009

We fabricated thermally evaporated 30 nm-Ni/(20 nm or 60 nm)a-Si:H/Si films to investigate the energy-saving property of silicides formed by rapid thermal annealing (RTA) at temperatures of $350^{\circ}C$, $450^{\circ}C$, $550^{\circ}C$, and $600^{\circ}C$ for 40 seconds. A transmission electron microscope (TEM) and a high resolution X-ray diffractometer (HRXRD) were used to determine the cross-sectional microstructure and phase changes. A UVVIS-NIR and FT-IR (Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy) were employed for near-IR and middle-IR absorbance. Through TEM and HRXRD analysis, for the nickel silicide formed at low temperatures below $450^{\circ}C$, we confirmed columnar-shaped structures with thicknesses of $20{\sim}30\;nm$ that had ${\delta}-Ni^2Si$ phases. Regarding the nickel silicide formed at high temperatures above $550^{\circ}C$, we confirmed that the nickel silicide had more than 50 nm-thick columnar-shaped structures with a $Ni_{31}Si_{12}$ phase. Through UV-VIS-NIR analysis, nickel silicide showed almost the same absorbance in the near IR region as well as ITO. However, in the middle IR region, the nickel silicides with low temperature showed similar absorbance to those from high temperature silicidation.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.22.2-22.2
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• 2009

Currently, metal silicides become increasingly more essential part as a contact material in complimentary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS). Among various silicides, NiSi has several advantages such as low resistivity against narrow line width and low Si consumption. Generally, metal silicides are formed through physical vapor deposition (PVD) of metal film, followed by annealing. Nanoscale devices require formation of contact in the inside of deep contact holes, especially for memory device. However, PVD may suffer from poor conformality in deep contact holes. Therefore, Atomic layer deposition (ALD) can be a promising method since it can produce thin films with excellent conformality and atomic scale thickness controllability through the self-saturated surface reaction. In this study, Ni thin films were deposited by thermal ALD using bis(dimethylamino-2-methyl-2-butoxo)nickel [Ni(dmamb)2] as a precursor and NH3 gas as a reactant. The Ni ALD produced pure metallic Ni films with low resistivity of 25 $\mu{\Omega}cm$. In addition, it showed the excellent conformality in nanoscale contact holes as well as on Si nanowires. Meanwhile, the Ni ALD was applied to area-selective ALD using octadecyltrichlorosilane (OTS) self-assembled monolayer as a blocking layer. Due to the differences of the nucleation on OTS modified surfaces toward ALD reaction, ALD Ni films were selectively deposited on un-coated OTS region, producing 3 ${\mu}m$-width Ni line patterns without expensive patterning process.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.615-620
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• 2008

We fabriacted thermal evaporated $10nm-Ni_{1-x}Co_x$(x=0.2, 0.6, and 0.7) films on 70 nm-thick polysilicon substrate with $0.5{\mu}m$ line width. NiCo composite silicide layers were formed by rapid thermal annealing (RTA) at the temperatures of $700^{\circ}C$ and $1000^{\circ}C$. Then, we checked the microstructure evaluation of silicide patterns. A FIB (focused ion beam) was used to micro-mill the interconnect patterns with low energy condition (30kV-10pA-2 sec). We investigated the possibility of selective removal of silicide layers. It was possible to remove low resistance silicide layer selectively with the given FIB condition for our proposed NiCo composite silicides. However, the silicides formed from $Ni_{40}Co_{60}$ and $Ni_{30}Co_{70}$ composition showed void defects in interconnect patterns. Those void defects hinder the selective milling for the NiCo composite silicides.